Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (12 page)

Reno, in the
backseat of his limousine, spent the balance of his ride home reading over a
stack of run-of-term contracts.
 
He felt
behind and bothered.
 
He looked up from
the paperwork at the town around him.
 
He
was going home earlier than he usually did, but that was because of Trina.
 
He hated when she was upset, and she was
highly pissed with him.
 
He had to make
this right.
 
Not that he was backing down
from his position regarding Amy Asshole.
 
He wasn’t.
 
She was not going to
be hanging around his wife.
 
But he had
to make it right with Tree.

Jimmy’s
Camaro was parked in the round of his circular driveway when his limo
arrived.
 
Trina’s Benz wasn’t present,
but if she was in for the evening she usually garaged it.

When his
Driver opened the back door, Reno shoved the contracts into his briefcase, and
got out.
 
He headed up the steps as the
door was opened by his Butler, and Reno walked in.

“Hey, Dad,”
Jimmy said as his father entered the huge family room.
 
Val was there also.
 
“You’re home early.”

“Where’s
everybody?”

“Val is
helping Dom and Sophie get changed for dinner.
 
The school called and we picked them up.
 
I thought Mom was with you.”

“She’s not
with me,” Reno said.
 
“Why would she be
with me?
 
And what do you mean the school
called?”

“The school
called.
 
Mom hadn’t picked up the Dommi
yet.
 
So Val and I picked up them both.”

That didn’t
make sense to Reno.
 
He pulled out his
cell phone.
 

Jimmy
watched his father as he stood there in his designer suit looking tattered and
worn.
 
His hair was a veritable
mess.
 
But, according to every female who
worked at the PaLargio, he was still sexy as hell.
 
“I heard you and Mom had a knockdown
drag-out,” he said.

Reno looked
at his son as Trina’s phone went to Voice Mail.
 
“Who told you that lie?”

Jimmy
smiled.
 
“So you and Mom didn’t have an
argument?”

“You didn’t
say argument.”
 
Then Reno spoke into the
phone.
 
“Tree, call me.
 
Where are you?”
 
He ended the call and looked at Jimmy.
 
“You said a knockdown, drag-out.
 
That’s not an argument, that’s a fight.”

“Whatever,
Pop.
 
You know what I meant.”

“Where did
Mom say she was going?” Reno asked him.

“What?”

“When you
called her about the kids.
 
Did she say
where she was going?”

Jimmy
frowned.
 
“Dad, were you listening?
 
Of course not, what am I saying? Mom didn’t
call us.
 
The school called.
 
They couldn’t get in touch with Mom.
 
They don’t even try to get in touch with
you.”

Reno
frowned.
 
“Are you telling me you haven’t
heard from your mother?”

Jimmy now
realized the problem too.
 
“That’s what
I’m saying,” Jimmy said.

Reno
immediately pulled up the GPS he had in Trina’s car.
 
Jimmy hurried over to him.
 
“What does it say?”

“Ambelin
bridge.”

“She’s
driving across it?”

“No,” Reno
said. “She’s on it.
 
She’s
stationary.
 
Dear Lord.”
 
He began hurrying for the front door.
 
“Val?” he yelled.

Val hurried
to the top of the stairs.
 
“Sir?” she
asked.

“Keep my
children,” he said, and hurried out of the door.

“What
happened, Jimmy?” Val asked her husband.

“Call
911.
 
Tell them there’s a woman in
distress on the Amberlin bridge.”

“Is it
Ma?”
 
Val asked, but Jimmy was gone.
  
Val pulled out her cell phone and
immediately dialed 911.

Reno and
Jimmy arrived ahead of the police as Jimmy’s Camaro stopped at the top of the
small, little-traveled viaduct of a bridge.
 
But there was no Trina, and no Mercedes Benz.

“Are you
sure this is the spot, Pop?” Jimmy asked his father.

Reno was
already checking the GPS again.
 
And
again it showed the bridge.

“This is the
place,” Reno said firmly, unbuckled his seatbelt, and got out of the car.
 
Jimmy then pulled the car over, and got out
too.
 

Reno went to
the rail and looked over into the river.
 
He saw nothing.
 
But he felt
something. Something strong.

“What are
you doing, Pop?” Jimmy asked.
 
“We need
to keep driving.
 
Maybe she’s around here
somewhere.”

Reno leaned
over the rail even further, and even further still, and what he saw caused his
heart to hammer.

“Sweet
Jesus!” He was hysterical as he ran as if his life depended on it to the bottom
of the bridge, and then over the side rail.
 
Jimmy was running behind him, asking what did he see. Normally, he would
outrun his father.
 
But not this
time.
 
Reno was running down that
embankment with a maniac’s speed.

And that was
when Jimmy saw it too.
 
Trina’s Mercedes,
half engulfed into the river, with the top half still visible.
 
Trina’s head could be seen at the inside roof
of the car, breathing through what appeared to be the slimmest pocket of air.
 
But she was trapped inside.

Sirens could
be heard as Reno and Jimmy made it to the car and did everything they could to
open the door, to push the window down further, to get Trina out.
 
Reno pounded his entire body against the car.
 
“Hold on, sweetheart,” he was saying.
 
“Hold on!”

Jimmy ran
back up the embankment.
 
“The jaws of
life!” he cried to the rescue workers who had arrived.
 
“We need the jaws of life!”

It took an
eternity to Reno, and he didn’t think his heart could take it, but the workers
ran down with the Jaws of Life and somehow, miraculously, managed to free
Trina.
 
Reno was able to pull her out of
what should have been her certain death.
 
She was still alive, to Reno’s great relief.
 
But he shuddered to think what could have
been her outcome.

While the
hospital was performing their battery of tests, Reno phoned one of his
assistants and ordered her to go to the penthouse, pick up clothing Val had
picked out for Trina (undergarments, jeans, a t-shirt), and then bring them to
the hospital.
 
When Trina returned to the
hospital room, she took a hot shower, changed into those clean clothes, and was
now freshly washed and sitting on top of the twin-sized hospital bed with her
back against the even smaller headboard.
 
Reno, in his well-worn, now dried suit, sat beside her and had her
snuggly in his big arms.
 
Jimmy was in
the small private room also, pacing the floor and talking to Val on his cell
phone, as they waited for the test results.
 
He seemed lively and refreshed too, but he wasn’t.
 
There was a horrific sense of
what-could-have-been
that stifled the
air in there and that none of them could shake.

Trina laid
her head on Reno’s shoulder and he snuggled her closer.
 
She didn’t feel physically ill at all, except
for a little exhaustion, but she was still shaken.
 
She remembered just being there, in that car,
her mouth hovering just above the waters as if God Himself had given her that
life source she had to have to stay alive.
 
And she held on for dear life.
 
She held on for her children.
 
She
held on for her husband.
 
She held on for
herself!
 
And when she saw Jimmy at the
scene, and her beloved Reno, her faint heart grew so hopeful, and she became
even more determined to hold on.

When the
authorities pried her out, and she floated into Reno’s arms, she held onto him
like she had never held onto another human being before.
 
She laid her head on his broad shoulder then
too.
 
He had to ride with her in the
ambulance, because she wasn’t letting him go.

“You’re
okay?” Reno asked her for what had to be the thousandth time.

“I’m okay,”
replied Trina.
 
And then there were
knocks on her hospital door.

But it
wasn’t the doctor who entered the room.
 
It was a cop.
 
Reno could smell
one a mile away.

Jimmy could
too.
 
“I’ll call you back,” he said into
his cell phone, and ended the call.

“Mrs.
Gabrini?”
 
The detective was looking at
Trina and Trina alone.

“Yes,” Trina
responded.
 
“May I help you?”

The officer
smiled and moved toward her bed, extending his hand.
 
“I’m Detective Luscent, ma’am.”
 
They shook hands.

“This is my
husband, Dominic, and my son James.”

The
detective nodded toward Reno as if he knew “Dominic” very well.
 
There wasn’t a cop in Vegas who hadn’t at
least heard of the head of the Gabrini clan, and Luscent was no exception.
Luscent then nodded toward Jimmy.
 
He
knew of him too.
 
“I’m here to make sure
the officer on scene had recorded your remembrance of the events correctly,” he
said to Trina.

Trina was
all ears.
 

“According
to the officer, you said you felt a jolt, as if you’d been hit from behind.”

“That’s
right.”

“And then
the next thing you knew you had lost control of the wheel and was careening and
then sailing over the bridge rail.”

Trina
nodded.
 
“That’s what I remember, yes.”

“Before the
crash, do you remember seeing any cars behind you?”

Trina
thought about that.
 
Then she shook her
head.
 
“No.
 
It just doesn’t be that many cars on that
road.
 
That’s why I went that way.”

The
detective didn’t understand.
 
“You went
that way because there aren’t many cars on that road?”

“I drove
that way so I could think and clear my head without the bother of traffic.”

Reno’s jaw
tightened.
 
He knew exactly why she felt
a need to
think
and
clear her head
, and it was all because
of his ass.

The
detective, however, was in the dark.
 
“May I ask what were you clearing your head from?”

“It was
personal,” Trina quickly responded.
 
“It
had nothing to do with what happened on that bridge.”

Luscent
smiled.
 
“Are you sure about that,
ma’am?
 
What may seem trivial to you
could be the break in the case we need.”

“No case is
going to break over that,” Reno said impatiently.
 
“She said it was personal.
 
Move on.”

The
detective didn’t like Reno’s comment and immediately became defensive.
 
“You may be in charge of the PaLargio, Mr.
Gabrini,” he said, “but I’m in charge of this investigation.
 
And I’ll move on when I feel it’s time to
move on.”

Reno gave
the detective a cold stare.
 
Luscent felt
the chill, and moved on.
 
“We have no
reason to believe that it was nothing more than a simple hit-and-run at this point,”
he said.
 
“We have no suspects either,
but we’ll continue to investigate.”

“Thank-you,
detective,” Trina said.

“You’re
welcome, ma’am,” Luscent responded with a slight nod of his head.
 
He looked at Reno one more time.
 
“We’ll be in touch,” he added, to Trina, and
then left.